


You keep me standing tall (You help me through it all)

by admirabletragedy



Series: Klaine Valentine's 2021 [13]
Category: Glee
Genre: Blaine Anderson has ADHD, M/M, ableism directed towards characters, klaineccvalentines2021
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29418858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/admirabletragedy/pseuds/admirabletragedy
Summary: Day 13: Glory Of Love [Peter Cetera]❀❀❀And then he’s kissing Kurt, the world around him becoming nothing at all, and all that there is and ever was, becomes the press of his lips against Kurt’s.It’s as though everything had been leading to this moment, waves crashing around them in the form of shared memories.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel
Series: Klaine Valentine's 2021 [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2139096
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13
Collections: KlaineCCValentines2021





	You keep me standing tall (You help me through it all)

**Author's Note:**

> Quotes are from "Remember This," by NF and "Glory of Love," by Peter Cetera.
> 
> Also shoutout to my mom who walked into my room, heard that song playing and just went, "iS thAt yOUr SpoTifY??? itS aN oLd sONg"

❀ ❀ ❀

_"they say when you grow up_

_you'll understand when you're older"_

There’s no sudden, miraculous change that takes place after Blaine’s diagnosis. It’s stupid, looking back now, that Blaine thought there would be.

His parents are given an informational brochure and he’s given the prescription to medication he’ll need to pick up from the pharmacy.

Blaine’s fifteen, young but tired, when he’s labeled neurodivergent: ADHD and sensory.

  
  


❀ ❀ ❀

_"those people will cut you open_

_just to watch you bleed"_

School only gets harder as time goes on, focusing does as well. 

It seems as though every struggle he overcomes, there’s more and more. Days become a game of chance when it comes to focus. 

Blaine loves Dalton, the Warblers, and the friends he’s made there. 

But there will always be ignorance, no matter where he goes, it’s sure to follow. What surprises him is the fact that this time, it’s ableism, not homophobia.

This doesn’t stop him from wanting to scream when a kid who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about mutters a slur in Blaine’s direction when the teacher gives him extended time.

Two days later, he joins Dalton’s boxing club. He ~~doesn’t~~ imagine the punching bag is that student who sat next to him during French class. 

  
  


❀ ❀ ❀

_"grab your own glass and fill it,_

_don’t let your fear destroy you"_

Meeting Kurt is like a breath of fresh air in tired lungs. 

It’s strange, Blaine thinks as he reaches for Kurt’s hand on the spiral staircase, he could swear he’s seen him somewhere before.

Time passes, Blaine fixates on helping Kurt; it distracts him from his distractions.

He’s there when Kurt calls him that day, voice shaking as he tells Blaine of how he stood up against Karofsky. Any pride dies in his throat when Kurt says what happened next.

Maybe going to McKinley and facing the bully is a bad idea but Blaine’s always been impulsive.

  
  


❀ ❀ ❀

_"i look at the world from a different angle"_

_"there's so many things i wanna say"_

Blaine tells Kurt he has ADHD on a Thursday night, sitting crisscrossed opposite from him on Kurt’s dorm room bed. 

His response is anticlimactic, surprising, and so totally Kurt that Blaine smiles thinking about it.

“Okay? That doesn’t make you any less at risk of my rage if you don’t help me study for this stupid English test.”

Blaine laughs, Kurt smiles, and the world keeps spinning like nothing’s changed at all.

A week later, Kurt tells Blaine he has OCD.

If they weren’t best friends before, they are now.

  
  


❀ ❀ ❀

_"i have always needed you"_

Despite Kurt’s blasé reaction to Blaine’s admission, Blaine catches him googling ADHD on his computer, to which Kurt’s fight or flight response damn near makes him sprint out of his room.

He can’t, thankfully Blaine had moved to stand next to him at the desk, preventing him from running.

“I swear it’s nothing bad, I just-” Kurt pauses, “I wanted to see what ways I could help.”

Blaine smiles at him and rests a hand on his shoulder, “I think it’s sweet but you could’ve just asked.”

Kurt looks down at his hands where he’s wringing them over his lap, “I don’t know why I was so worried about asking.”

Blaine shrugs, embarrassment coloring his cheeks in a blush as he says, “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve been terrified to ask you the same thing.”

Kurt meets his eyes, surprise written plainly in his expression, maybe a bit of wonder too, “Well, I guess there’s nothing stopping us now, is there?”

“Nothing at all,” Blaine repeats, and there isn’t.

  
  


❀ ❀ ❀

_"tonight it's very clear_

_'cause we're both lying here"_

That evening finds them both sitting on Blaine’s bed, backs leaning against the wall and legs stretched across the width of the bed.

Blaine holds Kurt’s hand, playing with it, turning it over, and tracing the lines of his palm. It helped him focus and it made Kurt shiver, sending something warm surging through Blaine. Kurt’s fingers twitch absentmindedly as he finally sighs, saying, “I don’t even know where to start, help me understand.” 

Blaine huffs out a laugh, “Some days I don’t even understand it myself.”

When he turns to glance at Kurt, the brunet is already looking at him, eyes searching but calm, “I want to know you. All of you,” Blaine blushes, “just tell me what you do understand.”

Blaine keeps his hold on Kurt’s hand, sandwiched between both of his, and faces forward, letting his eyes slide shut, “My brain can’t focus on one thing over the others. It can’t cancel out the background information. I just feel everything at once.”

“What do you feel now?” Kurt asks quietly.

Blaine pauses, trying to place names to things he can’t block out, “Someone laughing in the hall, the sound of the AC running, crickets outside, the wind making the tree branches knock against the building, the fabric of my uniform rubbing against me. Your breathing,” he adds, “the way your hand feels in mine.”

When he opens his eyes again, Kurt’s looking at him still, “That’s a lot.”

Blaine smiles, somewhat self-deprecating, “It always is.”

“Does taking medicine help?” Kurt asks before he seems to process his words, “That was out of line, I’m sorry. I just know mine helps sometimes, I was wondering if it was the same for you.”

Before Kurt can continue, Blaine cuts in, “It’s okay, I don’t mind. It helps some days but it’s still difficult to focus a lot of the time. Boxing helps, moving around does too.”

“So if I see you struggling to focus,” Kurt starts.

“I should probably get up and walk around, yeah,” Blaine finishes.

“You help me calm down,” Kurt looks at him, expression shifting into one that Blaine can’t name, “I don’t know why, but being near you helps.”

“Being near you helps me too,” Kurt half-whispers. When Blaine turns to look at him again, his cheeks are dusted reddish-pink.

  
  


❀ ❀ ❀

_"it's not about what people think,_

_it's how you feel inside"_

_"i could never make it alone"_

“Can I stop masking when I’m with you?”

Kurt looks up from his math homework with furrowed brows, setting his pencil down on the table, “You mask in front of me?”

Blaine looks down, self-consciousness rearing its ugly head, and Kurt brushes his ankle against Blaine’s leg underneath the table.

“Yeah, sometimes.” _Most of the time._ He thinks so, at least, sometimes he doesn’t know.

“I don’t want you to ever feel like you can’t be yourself in front of me,” Kurt says, meeting Blaine’s eyes from across the table.

Blaine smiles softly, bumping his leg against Kurt’s, _thank you._

He leaves his leg there; the touch is warm, grounding.

  
  


❀ ❀ ❀

_"actions speak louder than words do"_

_"i will always love you"_

The first time he stims in front of Kurt is after they watch Avengers. They’d just gotten back to Dalton and had gone straight to Kurt’s empty dorm room, where the brunet watches him rant about the movie in fond amusement. 

It barely lasts for a second — Blaine’s arms shaking where he raises them and laughs — but he holds his breath, breathing through his nose to calm down. 

Hands on his wrists make him tense, but when Blaine looks up, Kurt’s smiling at him, soft and encouraging.

“I believe you were telling me about Robert Downey Jr,” Kurt says, leaning into Blaine’s side in a way that doesn’t make him want to curl away from the contact.

Blaine turns his hand over, squeezing Kurt’s wrist gently before going back to his explanation of the movie.

Kurt just sits and listens, warm and real against Blaine, and the thought of that alone is enough to make him stim again.

  
  


❀ ❀ ❀

_"sometimes i just forget_

_say things i might regret"_

_"but that's what happens when you_

_see the world through a broken lens"_

It was only a matter of time before things went south, Blaine’s always known that. But they weren’t meant to with Kurt.

Kurt, who was avoiding him, sitting tensely during practice and becoming a ghost of a presence outside of class. Worst of all, Blaine had no idea why. At first, he’d thought Kurt was just having a bad day, but day turned to days, and patience turned to frustration turned to mounting panic.

Knocking at his door makes Blaine pause, glancing at the entrance to his room with stirring anxiety.

It’s Kurt that Blaine sees standing outside the door. Kurt who’s holding a plate of cereal and a small carton of milk. At Blaine’s incredulous look, Kurt blushes, adamantly staring at a point behind Blaine on the wall, “You missed breakfast.”

Blaine doesn’t move, barely breathes.

Kurt raises an eyebrow, “Well, are you gonna invite me inside?”

Blaine steps to the side, opening the door to let Kurt walk in. When he closes the door behind him, the tension is palpable.

Kurt places the food down on his desk and sits on the edge of Blaine’s bed, legs crossed at the ankle.

It’s only when Kurt clears his throat that Blaine realizes he hasn’t moved, “You need to eat, Blaine.”

But he can’t, not now that Kurt’s finally looking at him, talking to him, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I did but I’m so, so sorry.”

“Blaine?” Kurt asks.

“You’ve been avoiding me all week.”

“I have,” Kurt says slowly, like he’s sounding them out.

“I don’t know what I did,” Blaine repeats, frustration blooming in the form of teary eyes.

“I- You haven’t exactly done anything. It’s about the Warblers, and practice, and how it’s only ever you getting solos.”

Blaine’s jaw drops, “What?”

Kurt throws a hand up in exasperation, “You never give anyone else a chance to sing. It’s frustrating.”

“Why couldn’t you just tell me that?” Blaine questions, forcefully scrubbing his eyes with the sleeves of his dress shirt. 

“I didn’t think that- Blaine, what’s actually going on?” Kurt cuts himself off.

Blaine leaves his hands over his face, hating how vulnerable he is now, “I thought you were angry, I thought you stopped wanting to be friends.”

“Wha- Blaine, no. Never.” The mattress springs squeak as Kurt walks over, throwing his arms around Blaine, tugging him close in a hug.

Blaine just lets himself be held.

  
  


❀ ❀ ❀

_"i'm always strong when you're beside me"_

The first time Blaine’s ever been able to silence everything at once comes in the form of the moments after his anxious rambling towards Kurt, sitting down next to the brunet in the middle of the student commons.

Later, he’ll analyze all that he said, replay it over and over and over, remembering each of Kurt’s reactions like they’ve been sketched into his heart. 

Now, he’s just talking, real and honest and impulsive.

And then he’s kissing Kurt, the world around him becoming nothing at all, and all that there is and ever was, becomes the press of his lips against Kurt’s.

It’s as though everything had been leading to this moment, waves crashing around them in the form of shared memories, of shared hope, trust, and love. 

  
  


❀ ❀ ❀

_"we'll live forever_

_knowing together_

_that we did it all for the glory of love"_

Good times followed by bad and good again, they all lead Blaine here, curled up in his husband's arms, still and quiet in a way he can only ever be around Kurt.

They’d both gone through so much, survived through so much, and through it all, their love had only grown.

The feeling of a hand pressed against his jaw, turning his head, pulls Blaine out of his thoughts and he smiles as Kurt kisses him sweetly, resting their foreheads together as he pulls back.

And yeah, maybe it’s selfish, but Blaine would do it all again if it meant loving and being loved by Kurt. 

**Author's Note:**

> oh look, it's that fanfic author that loves to project through blaine


End file.
